






















The Modern Woman 

A SERMON TO WOMEN 

\ 


BY 

BOB JONES, Evangelist 


Price 20 cents 


Published by 

GLAD TIDINGS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
207 South Wabash Avenue 
Chicago. Illinois 





&V5TH 


Copyright 1923 
by 

GLAD TIDINGS PUBLISHING COMPANY 


©C1A761850 


OCT 30 1923 


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THE MODERN WOMAN 


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THE MODERN WOMAN 

An Address to Women by Bob Jones 


As preliminary to what I am going to say but 
not as a text, I read a verse from the first chapter 
of Second Timothy. “When I call to remembrance 
the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first 
in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; 
and I am pursuaded that is in thee also.” The 
apostle Paul is writing to Timothy and says in sub¬ 
stance: “Timothy, I am sure you are a good man. 
You had such a good mother and such a good grand¬ 
mother.** In other words, “Timothy, you could 
hardly be otherwise than good. A man having 
back of him such a wonderful mother and such a 
wonderful grandmother would naturally be a good 
man.’’ 

As a rule, great women are the daughters of 
great men, but whenever a great man touches this 
earth, back of him was a great mother. This 
mother may have lived in obscurity, but you may 
rest assured that whenever you see a great man in 
any walk of life, that man had a great mother. 

From a human standpoint the hope of the world 
has been the goodness of women. Men have always 
been bad, but women have to some extent at least 
counteracted the depravity of depraved men as 
generations have been born into this world. No 



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THE MODERN WOMAN 


nation ever went to ruin until the women of that 
nation became corrupt. All the forces of evil can 
never destroy America if our women remain pure. 

In the sight of God the sin of man and the sin 
of woman is the same. Any sin that will damn a 
woman will damn a man. God makes no distinc¬ 
tion. While this is true, the consequences of a 
woman’s sin in this world are more serious than the 
sin of man. In other words, if all men were cor¬ 
rupt, and all women were pure, I would still have 
some hope for the world, but if all women were 
corrupt, and all men were pure, I could have no 
hope for the future of the human race. 

I am sorry to say to you that in my own lifetime 
1 have seen a change take place in the women of 
this country. Now do not misunderstand me, I 
have not lost faith in women. A man is far on 
the road to ruin when he loses confidence in all 
women. But I must be true to you, and say I 
think the percentage of good men in this country 
may be on the increase, but I fear the percentage of 
good women is on the decrease. Women are still 
better than men, but if certain tendencies with 
which we are going to deal in this address are not 
checked, the women will not always be better than 
the men. I sometimes feel that in view of some 
conditions in our modern life I had rather have the 
responsibility of rearing a boy than a girl. 

Woman in this country has come down from the 




THE MODERN WOMAN 


5 


pedestal where men admired her twenty-five years 
ago. Not long ago I made that statement on a cer¬ 
tain platform in the South. Sitting behind me on 
this platform was one of the most brilliant ministers 
I know, and one of the truest gentlemen 1 have ever 
met. As 1 continued the talk this minister began to 
sob. When I was through with my message he 
walked to the front of the platform and asked if he 
might make a statement. Tears were streaming 
down his cheeks, and he cried out between his sobs: 
“Oh for the ideals of my youth. When I was young 
1 thought every woman I met was as pure as the 
snow. My mother taught me to believe this about 
women. I hate to admit it, but in my lifetime I 
have seen a change take place in the womanhood 
of my country.” Do you know that cry is going 
up from the hearts of thousands of men in America? 

Men are losing respect for women as a whole. 
You take the nicest girl in this city and let her get 
aboard a railroad train and start on a journey. It 
would be surprising if she should reach the end of 
her journey without some wicked man on the train 
attempting to flirt with her. Why is that? The 
average man of the world knows that he can flirt 
with so many women he is willing to take chances 
with any of them. A few years ago even a wicked, 
malicious man would not dare flirt with a strange 
woman, but the godless, giddy, flippant and loud 
girls and women of this country have dragged down 




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THE MODERN WOMAN 


all women in the estimation of a great many men. 
It is a sad day for our world when men lose respect 
for women. 

1 wanted to say these preliminary things before 
I take my text. I am not here to entertain you. I 
am not here to be gallant. 1 am not here to please 
you, but I am here as a minister of the gospel of 
Christ to deliver a message which I believe God 
wants the women of America to hear and not only 
to hear but to heed. 

When I warm up to my subject please do not 
misunderstand me. I am not talking about all 
women, but 1 am talking about a type of woman 
that has been developed in our modern life. 1 call 
her the Modern Woman for the simple reason she 
is a product of this generation. This message does 
not apply to a great many of you women here in 
this audience. Many of you have never bowed 
your knees to the god of pleasure. Many of you 
are lifting up the banner of pure womanhood, and 
you will agree with me as I go on with this message. 

You will find my text in First Timothy, the fifth 
chapter and sixth verse: “But she that liveth in 
pleasure is dead while she liveth.” 

The type of woman I am talking about is the 
most adaptable creature in the world. She can 
adapt herself to any style. If it is stylish to be fat 
she can be fat. If it is stylish to be thin she can be 
thin. It is no longer a question of the style fitting 




THE MODERN WOMAN 


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her. She fits the style. She knows what they are 
going to wear in this country next season, and she 
will be ready. If the styles are to be for fat woman 
she will be fat or eat up everything in town. If 
the styles are to be for thin women she will get 
thin or starve herself to death. There is one thing 
about this woman. She will not excuse any woman 
in the world who doesn’t keep up to date. This 
Modern Woman thinks by day and dreams by night 
about what she is going to wear. Her conversation 
always turns to clothes, for clothes she lives. 

I haven’t seen the women in this country refuse 
to wear or try to wear anything that Dame Fashion 
suggests. A few years ago some of them tried to 
wear the sheath gown, and a number of them were 
arrested in American cities. A year or two later 
they wore the hobble skirts and had to split them 
to walk. Lots of them broke their fool necks get¬ 
ting on and off the street cars. I was in New York 
about the time they introduced the street cars with 
the doors in the middle and the low step. These 
cars came in about the time the hobble skirts were 
in vogue. There are women in this audience who 
will wear anything, modest or immodest, decent 
or indecent, pure or impure, if they think it is 
stylish. If fashion says, “Go without sleeves,’’ you 
go without sleeves. If fashion says “low neck,” 
you say “low neck.’’ If fashion says “high collars 
and long skirts,*’ you are for them. 




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THE MODERN WOMAN 


I am glad there are some women who have 
enough character and individuality to dress attrac¬ 
tively without worshipping the goddess of fashion. 
1 think it is every woman’s duty to make herself 
attractive and neat, but 1 do protest against the 
tendency of a great number of superficial women 
who have no individuality but whose only ambition 
in this world is to have plenty of clothes and have 
them according to the latest styles. 

Now let’s study for just a few minutes the effects 
and results of this fashion craze. In the first place 
let’s look at the effect upon the woman herself. 
God gave you a soul, a mind, and a body. Your 
soul is the highest part of your being. Your mind 
is next, your body is the lowest part of your being. 
The whole tendency of the modern craze is to con¬ 
centrate the attention on the body. There was a 
time when men saw women they looked up. Now 
they look down. The tendency is to catch the 
attention of men and concentrate this attention 
altogether on the body. There are many of you 
women in this audience who are nothing more or 
less than decorated animals. You live on the 
animal plane. There is where you think. 

There are mothers here who take their girls when 
they are young and innocent and consecrate these 
girls on the altar of fashion. The girls in this coun¬ 
try who ought to have roses of modesty blooming in 
their cheeks have their faces covered with paint. 



THE MODERN WOMAN 


9 


They are old before they are grown. Many of them 
are loud, and immodest, and you can’t expect any¬ 
thing else. A friend of mine told me recently about 
a fifteen-year-old girl who was dressed for the ball. 
Someone said, “You have such a beautiful dress." 
The girl replied quickly and without a blush, "It 
isn’t naked enough." 

If men walked up and down the streets im¬ 
modestly clad their faces would burn with shame. 
You women go out half dressed and your faces do 
not burn. Is it possible that the women in this 
country are less modest than men ? 

There is not only the immodesty of the dress, 
there is the extravagance. Here is a woman who 
says, "I have money to buy as nice clothes as I 
please. Haven’t I a right to spend my money as 
I wish?" No, you have not the right to buy ex¬ 
travagant clothes if you are liable by your influence 
to drag some other woman to ruin. Girls are going 
to ruin because they cannot keep pace with modern 
fads and fashions. Extravagant idle society women 
are opening the road to sin and degradation for 
many a poor girl. Trying to keep up with the times 
often causes married women to lose their honor and 
shadow their home. Marriage vows are broken for 
clothes. Why don’t you well-to-do women set an 
example of simplicity in dress for your sisters who 
are less fortunate in financial affairs? 

There is the effect of extravagance on the home 




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THE MODERN WOMAN 


life in America. Some of you women listening to 
me now have your husband’s nose to the grindstone 
and you are turning the grindstone. There are men 
whose wives are in this service who are out in the 
business world sweating blood to pay for the ex¬ 
pensive clothes that you wear to your social func¬ 
tions. There are men in the penitentiary today 
who would never have been there if they had been 
married to economical, practical, sensible women. 
If a worldly, extravagant, flippant butterfly of a 
wife drives a man to crookedness in business by her 
extravagance, she ought to be put behind the bars 
in the place of her husband, and he ought to be 
hung for being a fool. 

Listen to me, ladies, the sin of America today is 
the sin of impurity. The battle that confronts the 
American manhood and womanhood is the fight for 
personal purity. I sometimes speak on the text, 
“They have eyes full of adultery.” I wish I had 
time to preach that sermon to you women. I tell 
you this much. The immodest dress of women has 
had more to do with filling the eyes of men with 
impurity than any other one influence. 1 tell you 
frankly I have ceased to hope for men to live pure 
as long as women dress indecently. 

I know you say “Horrid men!” I agree with 
you. I am not talking about conditions as they 
ought to be; I am talking about conditions as they 
are. I tell you women as long as you wear im- 



THE MODERN WOMAN 


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modest and suggestive clothes the minds of a big 
percent of men will be filled with impurity. You 
hear lots of talk about these “street mashers.” 
These degenerates who gather on the street corner 
and feast their lustful eyes on women when they 
pass. You women are responsible for the “street 
mashers.” They have been produced by the im¬ 
modest clothes which women have worn up and 
down the streets of American cities. The way to 
break up this street mashing is easy. Just let the 
women in this country go back to their old-time 
modest street dresses and you will soon disperse 
that crowd of degenerates. 

Another thing about the type of woman I am 
discussing, she is inclined to be “bossy.” She has 
made up her mind to run everything. When you 
and your husband married you had one room and 
one bureau. You said, “Now, dearie, you take 
this drawer and I will take this one.” In a few 
weeks you crowded him out of bureau space and 
suggested to him that he must get a chiffonier or 
chifforobe, just for himself. It wasn’t long till you 
crowded him out of chiffonier space. You wanted 
to run the home and take possession of everything. 
Homes are not planned for men and boys. They 
were planned for women and girls. Your husband 
went uptown and got an office, and it wasn’t 
long until his stenographer was running that. You 
women have been running the Church for a num- 




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THE MODERN WOMAN 


ber of years and now you are going to run the Gov¬ 
ernment. When you were clamoring for woman 
suffrage I was often asked what I thought about 
women voting. I said my opinion has nothing to 
do with it. If they want to vote they will vote. 
When women want a thing they never give up till 
they get it. 

I tell you frankly I never was for woman suf¬ 
frage. I was afraid of the tendency. Theoretically 
it was easy enough to convince me that a woman 
had the right to vote and that she had sense enough 
to vote, but I was afraid of the tendency of the 
movement. After you got the right to vote my 
wife and I went to the polls together and she voted 
with me. I think now that it is in the interest of 
good government for every good woman to vote, 
whether she believes in woman suffrage or not. All 
the bad women are voting. You good women go 
on and do your duty and counteract their influence. 

I am willing for you to run the home, the busi¬ 
ness world, the church and the government, but I 
don’t like for you to be so “bossy” about it. All 
of this spirit on the part of so many women of 
“standing up for my rights” and “women’s privi¬ 
leges” and wanting to go into politics and be the 
big thing, makes me tired. I recognize the fact that 
conditions are abnormal and that it is necessary for 
some women to be in the business world, and that 
it is neither proper nor convenient for some women 




THE MODERN WOMAN 


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to have homes, but I have a contempt for any 
woman who can make a home and make it right 
who goes deliberately back on that opportunity for 
what she considers a larger field in public life. 

A friend of mine some time ago called my 
attention to some interesting figures which he had 
worked out. If every normal (notice I say nor¬ 
mal) married woman would become the mother of 
six children, and every child should have six chil¬ 
dren, and every grandchild six children, and every 
great grandchild six children, and every great great 
grandchild six children, and every great great great 
grandchild should have six children; she would 
be the mother, the grandmother, the great grand¬ 
mother, the great great grandmother, the great 
great great grandmother, and the great great great 
great grandmother of fifty-five thousand, nine hun¬ 
dred and eighty-six human beings. Suppose in 
every family there should be one minister, and sup¬ 
pose this one minister in every family should lead 
just one hundred souls to Christ. She could go 
home to heaven and sit down in the gate of the city 
and wait for five million, five hundred and ninety- 
eight thousand, six hundred human souls to come 
home to heaven led to God through the direct influ¬ 
ence of her offspring. When God gave a woman 
the privilege of becoming a mother and rearing a 
family, He gave her the greatest honor and the 



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THE MODERN WOMAN 


greatest opportunity for service that He ever con¬ 
ferred upon a human being. 

I know you women say conditions in the world 
are bad. That men have made a mess of every¬ 
thing. I am not trying to justify men, but I do not 
want you to dodge your responsibility. Remember 
that you were the mothers of the men. You had 
these men when they were little babies, and had the 
privilege of moulding them at the most impression¬ 
able period of human life. The world didn’t get 
hold of them until after you had them started. 
Some of you fell down on your job. You were 
running off after the world and neglecting your 
children for frivolities and pleasures, for political 
meetings and social gatherings, when you would 
have been of infinitely more service if you had 
stayed at home and shaped the lives of your chil¬ 
dren for God and the right. 

I despise a bossy woman, who wants to be like 
a man. I don’t think a “sissy” man is as unattrac¬ 
tive as a “buddy” woman. I heard my friend 
George Stuart lecture on the difference between 
women and men. You can’t be a man. You 
needn’t try. God made you different. God made 
your voice different. He made your voice to sing 
lullabies to a baby. He gave a man a voice so he 
could go out in the field and call the hogs. He gave 
you a dainty hand so you could pin the clothes and 
tie- the ribbons on the baby. He gave a man big 




THE MODERN WOMAN 


15 


hands to harness the horse and drive the cattle from 
the field. He gave you a fountain for the nourish¬ 
ment of your baby. When I say that some of these 
modern girls blush. If anything makes me tired it 
is to see some girl who exposes her form to the 
gaze of human society and then throws up her 
hands in holy horror at a good old-time American 
mother who nurses her baby in the old-time way. 

There is nothing more beautiful than woman¬ 
hood in its purity and reserve. There is nothing 
more detestable than for a woman to be like a man. 
I heard one not long ago on the platform trying to 
talk like a man. She was dressed as near like a 
man as she could and not be arrested. A few days 
later I heard another woman. She was a beautiful, 
modest, gentle type. She spoke to a great crowd 
in her winsome, quiet way. She stirred me with 
eloquence that only a woman has when she really 
talks like a woman. When she was through I said, 
“Thank God there are some left who are not trying 
to be men.” 

Another thing about the type of woman I am dis¬ 
cussing, she is lax in her ideals. In the old days 
with the old-time woman everything was black or 
white. Now things are a dull gray. The colors 
have come together. Here is what I mean, years 
ago if a woman had a bad name you kicked her out 
of society. Now you elect her president of a club. 
I can remember when a woman was divorced she 




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THE MODERN WOMAN 


was disgraced, but now she is one of the shining 
lights of society. I, of course, understand that the 
Bible gives one ground for divorce, but remember, 
there is only one. If your husband is untrue to 
you, you are entitled to a divorce according to the 
Bible. The trouble with the people today is they 
think they know more about it than God knows, 
and they are getting divorces on every kind of 
ground. 

When I was a boy in Southeast Alabama we had 
what we considered a terrible scandal in that com¬ 
munity. A boy was seen kissing his girl goodbye. 
We kicked this couple out of our social set. They 
didn’t come to any more of our candy pullings. 
The entire community felt like they were beyond 
the pale of decency. 

A few months ago 1 was sitting in the dining 
room of a certain hotel trying to eat my lunch. At 
a table near me there was a group of frizzly-headed, 
painted-faced, loud-mouthed girls. They were try¬ 
ing to let everybody know they were in the dining 
room. You know the type I am describing. I 
have a contempt for these loud-mouthed, noisy, 
modern girls. God give us some of those good old- 
time refined, quiet, gentle-talking American women. 
This group of girls were discussing the dance they 
had just been attending. They talked about every 
boy in town, and how tight this one held them on 
the ballroom floor. They were joking about some- 




THE MODERN WOMAN 


17 


body kissing one of the group. They were brazen 
little devils. That kind of talk would make our 
grandmothers turn over in their graves. 

You gray headed mothers and grandmothers, re¬ 
member when you were girls, that loud-talking, 
painted-faced, immodest girls lived in one section 
of the city to themselves. Things have changed. 
In the old days, if a woman had a bad name, society 
drew her garments about her and said, “1 can’t 
touch her any more. She is defiled.” Do you 
women know any shadowed woman in this town 
who keeps her social position? ”Yes,” you reply, 
“but we have learned to throw the mantle of charity 
about a fallen sister.” It is not a mantle of charity. 
It is a tolerance of evil. 

If a girl can be crooked and keep her social posi¬ 
tion, society puts a premium on crookedness. The 
girls of the community say, “I don’t have to be 
good. Look at Miss So-and-So. She does as she 
pleases and she is the most popular girl in town.” 
I believe in the old method of casting them out when 
they are not straight. 

Now do not misunderstand me. I am not talk¬ 
ing about the women of the underworld. I have 
been down to those homes of sin where lights of 
impurity were burning, where those soiled doves 
lived in their earthly hell. I have been there to 
take the gospel to them. I have told them God 
loved them, and I have seen the tears of penitence 




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THE MODERN WOMAN 


cut trenches in the paint on their faces. I have 
seen them weep their way into the arms of God. 
I stand ready to help those women. 1 would be¬ 
friend them, try to get them on their feet, and 
secure for them an opportunity to make an honest 
living. The woman that I want to see cast out is 
the impenitent, brazen, shadowed society woman 
who sometimes is as crooked in the sight of God 
as a woman of the underworld, but who keeps her 
social position and lifts in society her defiant head 
and thinks she is as good as the best. 

The Modern Woman is a novel reader. 1 have 
no objection to the right kind of fiction, but many 
of our women are reading sex novels. Most of 
these novels are written for women. Men don’t 
buy them. Several years ago 1 went into a book 
store in one of our southern cities. A girl standing 
at the counter with the books piled up around her 
insisted that 1 purchase two or three very question¬ 
able books. I asked her if she ever sold any of 
those books to men. She replied that she had been 
in that place for months, and that all of the sex 
books she had sold were sold to women. 

Several years ago I was talking to a prominent 
lawyer who is on the supreme bench of one of our 
southern states. This gentleman said, “Bob Jones, 
if the women do not quit reading the sex novels 
that are now being circulated among them, the 
purity of the womanhood of this country will soon 




THE MODERN WOMAN 


19 


be gone." I have stood on many a street car and 
have seen some girl holding onto a strap and ab¬ 
sorbed in some book that 1 personally would blush 
to read. Some of you girls get in your room at 
night and stay awake for hours crying over the 
crooked hero of a dirty questionable novel. Much 
of this literature is a picture of sin in a gilded palace. 
Lust is painted in exquisite colors. Impurity is 
made fascinating. You can’t love the crooked hero 
of an impure book and have a pure heart. What 
you love and what you hate determine what you 
are. 

There are mothers in this audience who pay no 
attention to the books their daughters read. Your 
daughter becomes a part of everything she reads, 
and she becomes a big part of the things that inter¬ 
est her most. It looks like some mothers in this 
country act as if they didn’t care if their daughters 
did go to the devil. A friend of mine said to me 
recently, “Bob Jones, I believe that the mothers of 
this country are losing interest in their daughters, 
and many of them don’t care what becomes of their 
children." It would pay you mothers to go home 
today and have a heart to heart talk with your 
daughters, and find out what they have read. Some 
of you will be very much surprised. 

The woman I am talking about is unfit to marry. 
She is unfit to marry for two reasons. In the first 
place she despises restraint. She goes into married 



20 


THE MODERN WOMAN 


life with her mind made up to bear as few burdens 
as possible. She says, “When I get married I’m 
going my way and do as 1 please, and let my hus¬ 
band go his way and do as he pleases. 1 don’t 
expect to settle down and be an old woman. I am 
going to enjoy life.’’ When 1 hear them talk like 
that I know what is coming. There will soon be 
a divorce case, scandal will come, the man and wife 
are both doomed to ruin. 

Many women deliberately plan when they marry 
to shirk the responsibility of motherhood. No 
woman is fit to marry until she is willing to become 
the mother of a child by the man she marries. In 
the old days when a couple married they settled 
down and were satisfied with each other. They 
reared a family. Those old couples, however nar¬ 
row you think they may have been, are the people 
who made America. This generation is living on 
the piety which they handed down to us. If we 
are not careful we will soon lose this piety and have 
none of it to transmit to the next generation. 

In the second place she is unfit to marry because 
so often she has been guilty of indiscretions. She 
goes into married life with a secret to keep from 
the man she marries. A few years ago, in a Penn¬ 
sylvania city, at the close of my women’s meeting 
a lady came to me and said, “Mr. Jones, I am so 
anxious to talk to you. I live next door to your 
hotel. Will you come over to see me tomorrow 



THE MODERN WOMAN 


21 


morning? My husband was converted under your 
ministry a few nights ago. He is sick in bed and 
is anxious to see you, too.” The next day I called. 
I found her husband, the wife, and two sweet little 
children. The older child was a boy, about three 
years old. The baby was a little girl just a few 
months old. 1 had prayer with the husband and 
father. His conversion was genuine. I do not re¬ 
member to have met a more magnetic and charming 
gentleman. I left his bedroom and started down¬ 
stairs, followed by the wife and mother. She car¬ 
ried the sweet little baby in her arms and the 
beautiful little boy came behind holding to her 
skirts. When we were downstairs she asked me to 
step in the parlor so she could talk to me a minute. 
When we were seated she said, “Mr. Jones, when 
I was a girl”—then she sobbed—the little boy 
caught her skirts and said, “What you cry about, 
mamma, what you cry about?” The mother began 
again, still sobbing. “When I was a girl I was in¬ 
discreet. There are secret sins in my life my hus¬ 
band knows nothing about. He is the loveliest man 
in the world. I am so wretched. I simply can’t 
be happy. I can’t afford to tell him, for it would 
ruin his life and would do me no good to confess 
it, but oh, Mr. Jones, it is terrible, terrible, terrible!” 
As she finished the little boy said again, “What you 
cry about mamma, what you cry about?” I said to 
myself, here is a tragedy of horrors—a woman 



22 


THE MODERN WOMAN 


weeping over the secret of her girlhood indiscre¬ 
tions, while her own little boy begs for the secret 
of her weeping. 

I don’t see how some of you girls expect to be 
happy. You girls who go out on these joy rides 
at night and spoon with the boys. You may retain 
your physical virtue, but you go near enough to the 
fire to get scorched. Some day you will love a fine 
man and you and he will be married. You will go 
off on your honeymoon, then come back home, go 
uptown and the first man you see will be some 
fellow who has hugged, and kissed, and fondled 
you. Girls, if nothing ever happens in your life 
that you would hesitate to tell your mother, or that 
you would blush for the man you marry to know, 
happy girl are you. 

There is nothing like the consciousness of your 
own integrity. Years ago a warrior was leading 
an army to battle. False accusations were brought 
against him. He had in his hands the papers that 
would disprove these accusations. He was so con¬ 
scious of his own integrity that he tore these papers 
to shreds and led the army to battle. You pure, 
sweet, modest girls may sometimes think that these 
loud, fast girls who attract most attention and have 
the most beaus are the girls who are winning in 
life’s deal. Don’t believe it. They are the ones 
who are playing the losing game. In the years to 
come there will settle in your soul the peace that 



THE MODERN WOMAN 


23 


comes from the abiding consciousness of the purity 
of your own soul. You can defy all hell if you 
know you have never compromised your honor. 

There is another thing about the type of woman 
we are discussing. She lives for a good time. 1 
have been out in the world since I was fourteen 
years old and 1 have spent most of my time among 
strangers. 1 have seen girls parading up and down 
the streets, girls sometimes from the best homes, 
and I have seen them flirt through the window with 
men with whom 1 have been talking in the hotel 
lobby. Some of you mothers work and struggle 
to get your daughter off for a visit, and there are 
many tragedies that come to daughters visiting in 
homes where their mothers think they are perfectly 
safe. Knowing what I do, if 1 had a daughter I 
would hesitate to send her off visiting all over the 
country. 

Some mothers send their daughters away from 
home to try to marry them off. Some of these girls 
can’t marry in the town where they are known and 
their mothers try to put them off on strangers. 
These girls return and meet their girl friends, and 
they discuss their trip something like this, “Oh I 
never had so much fun. I haven’t slept since I 
left. Parties? 1 had one every day I was away 
from home. Boys? 1 never saw so many boys in 
my life. Oh, I am going back soon. 1 can hardly 
wait. I am going home now and go to bed and try 




24 


THE MODERN WOMAN 


to get some sleep.” You go home and sit around 
the house and your mother waits on you. You are 
irritable, fussy and mean. In a few weeks you 
recuperate and pack up for another visit. 

When you train up a girl with a good time for 
her ideal you will ruin her and unfit her for woman¬ 
hood, and for the highest and best things in this 
world. Our lives are shaped by our ideals. You 
show me your ideal and I will show you what you 
are. A thief is a man whose idea of life is money 
without work. Naturally, he steals. 

‘‘She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she 
liveth.” You will remember these are the words 
of our text. The Modern Woman is more and more 
becoming a pleasure lover. Her love of pleasure 
manifests itself in a number of different ways, but 
usually you will find that pleasure loving women do 
three things: They go to theatres, they play cards, 
and they dance. There are, of course, exceptions 
to the rule, and there are many other manifestations 
of the pleasure craze. 

1 think the histrionic talent is as God-given as 
any other talent, but I have long since learned that 
the devil has a mortgage on the American theatre. 
We have talked a great deal in this country about 
reforming the stage. To my mind the thing has 
reached the point where there is only one safe thing 
for Christian people to do, and that is to draw a 
line this side of the whole business. 




THE MODERN WOMAN 


25 


The stage is the only place where a person does 
not have to have character to get by. I do not 
believe that all actors and actresses are crooked. I 
think some of them are decent people, but they 
don’t have to be decent to get along. A preacher 
has to be either a hypocrite or a good man. Law¬ 
yers or doctors must either be hypocrites, live clean, 
or lose their practice. Actors or actresses can have 
a bad name, and do many questionable things, and 
still people will crowd theatres to see them perform. 
I was in a certain city recently and made a similar 
statement to this. The next day an actor came out 
with a communication in the paper saying, “There 
are more preachers in jail in America than actors 
and actresses.” I do not know whether he was cor¬ 
rect or not, but I said in reply, “These preachers in 
prison are no longer preachers. We kicked them 
out of the ministry. There are actors and actresses 
in this country who ought to be in prison who are 
shining lights in their profession.” 

We have reached a terrible day in our history 
when moving picture actors and actresses who have 
been divorced and whose names have been con¬ 
nected with all kinds of scandal, have become the 
ideal and teachers of our boys and girls. 

I am talking to girls now who will go to a show 
and witness every kind of scene which suggests 
impurity. These girls sit by boys and applaud the 
play. Maybe it is a picture of a man in some 




26 


THE MODERN WOMAN 


woman’s room, and the whole scene is painted in 
colors that fire the blood of youth. These same 
girls will come to hear me preach and call me 
“horrid” because I tell them the truth. 

You tell me that you go to the theatre for morals. 
That is like wading in filth for two hours and then 
drinking one drop of pure water. I don’t care to 
get my moral lessons that way. All of these pictures 
and plays filled with kissing scenes and suggestive 
plots have had much to do with the pulling down 
of the barriers between the sexes and have con¬ 
tributed much to the production of the loud, im¬ 
modest type of girl we have today. 

If you good decent Christian women would unite 
with the other Christian women throughout Amer¬ 
ica, you could put a stop to the whole wicked 
tendency of the stage and moving picture business, 
but you women permit your children to go and 
you go yourselves. I personally do not believe any 
woman can be going to a moving picture show four 
or five times a week without being developed into a 
superficial type. I don’t see how you care to go. 
There is a similarity about all the plays and it is 
the rarest thing in the world that you ever see one 
that has any refining influence. 

Another thing about the type of woman I am 
discussing, she is a card fiend. There is something 
about a deck of cards which cannot be made decent, 
though it is shuffled by the jeweled fingers of a 



THE MODERN WOMAN 


27 


church society woman. There is the odor of a 
gambling hell about every deck of cards you ever 
saw. The spades tell of graves they have dug in 
every cemetery. The clubs speak to us of heads 
they have crushed, and the hearts bring to our 
memory the human hearts they have broken, yet 
there are church women who are listening to me 
now who are as much intoxicated with card playing 
as any drunkard was ever intoxicated with drink. 
Some of you women go to bed at night and in your 
dreams you see the cards. You go to church on 
Sunday morning and while you are trying to listen 
to the sermon you see a deck of cards before your 
face. 

You tell me there is no difference between cards 
and any other game. I tell you, you are wrong. 
There is only one way to judge a tree, and that is 
by the fruit it bears. We judge any game or any 
pleasure by what the thing leads to. Cards lead to 
gambling. All card players are not gamblers. All 
men who drink whiskey are not drunkards, but 
taking a drink leads to drunkenness. Card playing 
leads to gambling. I have a friend who was speak¬ 
ing to a great crowd of men. He said, “Gentlemen, 
I am getting some statistics for my own informa¬ 
tion. I have no desire to embarrass any of you 
men, but you will do me a great favor if you will 
respond to the proposition I am going to make. I 
want all of you gentlemen who ever gambled in 




28 


THE MODERN WOMAN 


your life to stand up.” There were several hun¬ 
dred men who stood. “Now, gentlemen,” said the 
preacher, “you fellows who learned to play cards 
in some woman’s parlor please sit down.” Only 
one of the group remained standing. 

When 1 want information I always go to an 
authority on the subject in which I am interested. 
I was talking not long ago to a man who ran, for 
several years, a number of gambling hells in the 
underworld of one of our greatest cities. This gen¬ 
tleman is now a consecrated Christian, and is truth¬ 
ful and reliable in every particular. He told me 
that the underworld recruits its gamblers from the 
well-to-do families who teach their sons to play 
cards. 

Several years ago I was conducting a meeting in 
a very aristocratic town. At the close of one 
of my services a charming, sweet, beautiful old 
woman took me to one side and speaking in her 
quiet, gentle, refined way she said, “Mr. Jones, 1 
want to tell you a secret. Nobody knows what I 
am telling you. I am getting old, and I have had 
a heartache from my girlhood. During the Civil 
War I lived in Virginia, was active in the church 
but had some time for society. Like most of the 
girls in my group I was enthusiastic about card 
playing. 1 was engaged to a young army officer, 
who was such a charming fellow. I taught him to 
play cards. I have never known any man who be- 



THE MODERN WOMAN 


29 


came so fascinated with the game. As time passed 
he began to see me less often. One day the awful 
shock came. This dear boy was killed in a gambling 
hell. I have never before told anyone, but I feel 
like his blood is on my hands.” 

You women may go ahead if you like and play 
your cards, play for money, or play for prizes, or 
play for fun, but remember that you must meet 
the result of your influence at the judgment bar of 
God. Some of you may have children who will 
escape, but not all of you. If you want to take 
chances on damning your son, your husband, your 
brother, and your sweetheart, the responsibility is 
on you. 1 have warned you faithfully, and the 
blood of your loved ones will not be on my hands. 
There is certainly only one right thing for you 
Christian women to do, and that is to give God 
the benefit of the doubt. There is at least a ques¬ 
tion in your mind about what you ought to do. 
Play the game safe. You can’t lose anything by 
burning your cards and turning your back on your 
club. You might lose something if you keep your 
cards and continue your playing. 

The Modern Woman manifests her love for 
pleasure by participating in the modern dance. The 
dance has reached such a point nobody with any 
brains attempts to defend it. Even the dancing mas¬ 
ters of America have been expressing themselves 
freely about the immodesty and indecency of the 




30 


THE MODERN WOMAN 


dance in which most of the young people and some 
of the older people of America are taking part. 
You women needn’t think that you can make 
dances decent which had their beginning in the 
underworld. 

The modern dance was born in the realm of lust 
and had its beginning in the underworld. In fact, 
society people are engaged in forms of dancing now 
which the police force used to break up in the dives 
of the cities of America. I could never understand 
how a decent, pure, modest woman could do any¬ 
thing that has been abused and talked about as 
much as the modern dance. I can’t understand 
how you women who call yourselves Christians can 
get on the ballroom floor and go through the giddy 
whirl of dances that have been denounced and 
opposed for all these years by the best people of 
all the churches. 

You say the dance never hurts you. I tell you 
it has hurt you. Now don’t misunderstand me. 
You may have retained your virtue, but nobody 
can go through these modern dances and ever be 
the same again. 1 will prove it to you. Here is a 
girl sixteen years old. She is a modest, quiet, re¬ 
fined, pure child. Tonight she goes to her first 
dance. A man puts his arm around her and assumes 
with her a most familiar and suggestive posture. 
Her refined soul instinctively draws back from the 
embrace. Her cheeks burn, her eyes droop with 



THE MODERN WOMAN 


31 


the sense of shame. She goes home from this dance 
with her higher sensibilities jarred, and that voice 
which whispers in the soul of every pure girl says 
to her, “I should not have permitted that man to 
put his arm around me.” Next week the same girl 
goes to another dance. She blushes and her eyes 
droop with shame, but she doesn’t feel the jar so 
much. She continues to go to dances for three 
months, and by that time she can meet a strange 
man whom she never saw before and this stranger 
can assume with her all the familiar postures of the 
damnable modern dance and her cheeks do not burn 
and her eyes do not droop with shame. What 
caused the change? 1 can tell you. The dance has 
stabbed dead those nobler and purer impulses of 
modesty and refinement which God Almighty put 
in the heart of every pure, sweet girl. 1 tell you 
that no girl can ever be just the same after she goes 
through the dances we have had in this country for 
the past few years. 

Let me reason with you girls for just a moment. 
I do not say all girls have evil thoughts when they 
dance. I know that there are some girls who go 
through life without ever having any real evil 
thoughts and impulses. This is not true, however, 
with all girls. 

Do you, girl, back there listening to me now re¬ 
member not long ago you were dancing with a 
rather fascinating man and he drew you up so close 



32 


THE MODERN WOMAN 


to him you could scarcely dance and you were 
forced to draw back from his too familiar embrace ? 
Do you know what was the matter with your 
dancing partner? Let me explain. While he held 
you in his arms a devil of impurity awoke in his 
blood. Thoughts of lust filled his brain. You may 
have been as pure as snow, but I am telling you 
what was the matter with the man with whom you 
were dancing. If you are what you ought to be 
after this explanation you will never again be a 
willing instrument to fire the blood and stir thoughts 
of lust in any man on a ballroom floor. I can 
understand how girls dance and enjoy it before they 
have it explained to them. I have no confidence in 
any girl who continues to dance after she knows 
the facts. 

Several years ago I was conducting a revival in 
one of the best towns in the state of Georgia. At 
the close of my women’s meeting a beautiful, 
modest, reserved and quietly dressed girl asked to 
speak to me. We sat down in one corner of a 
building and she began her speech: “Mr. Jones,” 
she said, “I guess I shouldn’t tell you, but 1 think 
my mother is to blame.’’ 

“What do you mean?’’ I asked her. 

“Oh, you don’t understand,’’ she replied. “I am 
a fallen girl. I have a little baby who has no legal 
father. My mother did what other church mothers 
in this town did, sent me to a dancing school. I 



THE MODERN WOMAN 


33 


became a very graceful dancer. One night at a 
ball I danced with the most fascinating man 1 ever 
saw. There awoke in my nature strange impulses. 

1 did not understand these impulses. That night 
on my way home 1 fell, and then the baby. I hope 
my mother is in heaven, but mother should have 
protected me from these pitfalls. I don’t under¬ 
sand how any mother can permit her daughter to 
dance.” 

1 tell you why you women let your daughters 
dance. Every married woman here knows that 
there is a danger lurking in the whirl and music 
and familiarity of a ballroom. You let your daugh¬ 
ter dance because you have confidence in her, and 
you want her to be popular in the community. I 
tell you that you do not know what kind of devil 
sleeps in the blood of your child. 

Several years ago I was conducting a revival in 
a city of the middle west. One day I called at the 
office of a doctor friend of mine. I called at his 
request. This physician said, “Mr. Jones, you are 
right about the dance. I didn’t know it until re¬ 
cently, but I know it now. A few days before your 
meeting began here I was called to see a dying 
woman. She was a woman of sin and was running 
a house in the underworld. I walked up to her 
bed and saw the stare of death in her eye. Strug¬ 
gling for breath, she said, ‘Doctor, am I going to 
die?* 




34 


THE MODERN WOMAN 


“I replied, ‘Madam, there is no hope for you. It 
is just a matter of a short while and you will 
be gone.* 

“ ‘Doctor, before I die I want to tell you a story. 
For nineteen years I have been a woman of the 
underworld. I have been in houses of ill fame in 
Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chi¬ 
cago, San Francisco and all over America. I am 
a woman of education, and was reared in a home 
of culture. The dance is responsible for my ruin. 
The first impure thoughts I ever had I had on the 
ballroom floor. Since I have been in the under¬ 
world I have kept a record of the stories told me 
by fallen women. I think I know more women of 
ill fame than any other woman in this country. 
Nine out of ten of all the women with whom I have 
ever discussed the subject, told me that the first 
impure impulses they ever had they had while they 
were dancing.* ** 

If you church people would quit chaperoning and 
endorsing the dance you would close the door of 
the underworld. 

“Mr. Jones,” the doctor continued, “my wife and 
I, though I am an official church member, have 
chaperoned dances in this town, but that night as 
I stood by the bed of that dying woman I promised 
myself and my God to use all my influence against 
the dance for the rest of my life.** 

1 could stand here for an hour and tell 


you one 




THE MODERN WOMAN 


35 


story after another, but there is one other incident 
I wish to relate. 

Two or three years ago 1 was preaching in a little 
town in the South. There were only five thousand 
people in this town. There are eight girls in that 
town in society who have been ruined since these 
unmentionable modern dances were introduced. 
Those girls are not in the underworld. They are 
in society. Some day they are going to marry, and 
possibly become mothers. The mother of one of 
these girls spent most of her time while I was there 
criticizing me for what she called “my extreme” 
position. I used to think if that old soul could only 
know what 1 knew about her daughter. I learned 
the story of the ruin of those eight fallen girls in a 
most peculiar way. It came about like this: One 
night after I had retired someone knocked at my 
door. I went to the door, and there stood a young 
man, prominent in the social life of the community. 
His face was pale as death. His lips were quivering. 
“Mr. Jones, I want to talk to you about my soul,” 
he said. 

I invited the young man into my room, and 
asked him what was his trouble. The story of de¬ 
pravity which he poured into my ears almost froze 
the blood in my veins. He named eight prominent 
girls in that town whom he had seduced during the 
past twelve months. He told me that he used the 
dance for the purpose of enticing those girls on. 




36 


THE MODERN WOMAN 


In houses of sin in this country there are thou¬ 
sands and thousands of fallen women. A large 
percent of those women would never have been 
there if it had not been for the dance. Suppose 
you women and girls manage to keep your virtue, 
but your influence is back of the dance, and the 
dance leads other girls and women astray. When 
you go to the judgment bar of God you will have to 
answer for your influence. If you back the dance, 
and the dance damns somebody and you go to 
heaven, that soul in hell will cry out “Unjust, 
unjust, unjust,” until God’s throne itself topples 
and falls. 

“She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she 
liveth.” The love of pleasure deadens the finer 
feelings of womanhood. The love of pleasure kills 
a woman’s nobler impulses. The love of pleasure 
tends to destroy the innate sense of modesty in a 
woman’s heart. The society women of this coun¬ 
try use paint on their faces where roses of modesty 
ought to bloom. When a woman reaches the point 
where she cannot blush the best in her soul has been 
destroyed. 

The love of pleasure kills the mother instinct in 
a woman’s heart. Society women have as few 
children as possible. You wait until judgment day. 
Some woman in this audience will be looking into 
the face of God. A little baby will step up in front 
of you and say, “Do you know me?” 




THE MODERN WOMAN 


37 


“No," you will reply, “I don’t know you.'* 

"I am your baby,” the child will answer. "You 
murdered me before I was born.” God will send 
your soul to hell with the life blood of an unborn 
babe dripping from the tips of your damnable fin¬ 
gers. You can talk lightly about getting rid of a 
baby. You may run off to some quack doctor and 
ask him to commit the crime of child murder, but 
no woman ever got rid of a baby. You will meet 
the little one at the judgment. There are guilty 
parties at this service. You better get right with 
God. It will take lots of grace and mercy to blot 
out your terrible sin. If I had my choice I had 
rather meet in the day of judgment a man forty 
years old whom I had murdered, than to meet a 
little baby whom I killed before the little thing was 
born. The most cruel murder that 1 can conceive 
of is the murder of a little unborn babe. 

On the 30th of October, 1 883, in a simple home 
in Southeast Alabama I saw the light of day. I was 
the eleventh child. When I was fourteen years old 
I knelt by my mother’s dying bed, and put her hand 
on my brow. I was trying to find a warm place in 
that hand, that I might remember that dying touch 
forever. I promised to meet her in heaven, and 
she closed her eyes in death. We took her dear 
body and buried it in a lonely graveyard not far 
from home. Several years ago I put a simple 
monument to her grave. I planted flowers there. 



38 


THE MODERN WOMAN 


Many times I have sat by that grave and said, “Oh 
God, I had a good mother. Help me to be good/’ 
If I knew my mother did not welcome me when I 
was born I would loathe the memory of my mother. 
The mother who does not welcome her child when 
he is born, deserves to be cursed by that child when 
he is grown. I don’t say the child ought to curse 
the mother, but the mother deserves to be cursed. 

I think about my old-time mother. My mother 
belonged to the old school. She never shuffled any 
deck of cards. There was no ballroom where I 
lived. There was no theatre going, but there was 
a Bible, and there was a family altar. What I am 
today I owe to that Christian mother, and to the 
holy influence of a Christian father. 

Let me plead with you women. Turn your back 
on these questionable, sordid things of the world. 
Dedicate your hands to God. Lift up the flag of 
purity. Hold true to the traditions handed down 
to you from the old-time women of this country. 
Dedicate your life unreservedly to Jesus Christ, the 
Son of God. He’s a woman’s friend. He took the 
chains of slavery from your hand, and made you a 
queen. You owe your liberty and your all to Him. 
Come clean with Him today. 





















































































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